


everything you never said

by izayoi_no_mikoto



Category: Kyou Kara Maou!
Genre: Angst, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Nonnies Made Me Do It, Self-Hatred, Unrequited Love, possibly to be continued, reverse hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-08 11:40:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21475417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izayoi_no_mikoto/pseuds/izayoi_no_mikoto
Summary: Conrad falls in love.  Yuuri pays the price.
Relationships: Conrad Weller/Shibuya Yuuri
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	everything you never said

Everyone froze, and in that moment, Conrad hated himself.

The single flower petal fluttered toward the ground, innocent and unassuming. Yuuri blinked and stared at it, and then his eyes went dangerously wide. He whirled around to face Conrad and grabbed his sleeve, wearing a stricken expression. "Conrad," he said, his voice panicky, and then he coughed, gagged, and spat up an entire handful of delicate white petals.

Conrad stared, his mind going agonizingly blank.

"What," Yuuri said, his voice a rough whisper. He stared at the petals in his hand as though they were something horrific. And they were, they were disgusting, filthy, absolutely terrible in their beauty--

And Conrad was used to hating himself, but never had he loathed himself as he did in this exact moment.

Yuuri's hand shook. A single petal slipped free and fluttered to the ground. "But," Yuuri said, his voice plaintive and quivering, "but how--I don't--_how?_!"

Conrad's heart crumpled and curled on itself. _I promised myself_, a voice whispered at the back of his mind, _I promised myself that this time--_

Wolfram was dead white, and his entire body trembled. Even Gwendal looked a bit pale, though he held himself remarkably composed. Gunter was instantly in tears. "Your Majesty!" he wailed, flinging himself at Yuuri. The flower petals spilled from Yuuri's hands and drifted to the ground, a miniature hailstorm. "Horrible--awful--tragic--but only to be expected, Your Majesty, of course someone would fall in love with you--but oh! Your Majesty--"

Conrad averted his eyes. _I promised myself_, he thought, and loathed himself a little bit more.

"There's something wrong," Yuuri blurted, disentangling himself from a weepy Gunter. "Why do I have hanahaki?"

"Hana--what?" Wolfram demanded.

"This!" Yuuri said, gesturing wildly at the flower petals scattered around him. "Why do I have it?"

"Does the flower cough not exist in your world?" Gunter gasped. "Oh, Your Majesty!"

"No, we have--the flower cough?--we have it, but I'm not--I don't--_I'm not in love with anyone_!"

Gunter resumed wailing. Gwendal's brow furrowed. Wolfram recoiled as though he'd been punched. "Do you have to say it like that?" he snapped. "Of course you're not in--not in lo--of course you're not, that's the problem!"

Yuuri stared at him, confusing overtaking panic. "What?"

Wolfram stared back, increasingly incensed. "_What_?"

A perplexed silence descended. Belatedly, Conrad's mind caught up, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. _Get a grip_, he told himself, and then he forced a pleasant smile onto his face. "I believe that's one of the differences between your world and ours, Your Majesty," he said gently to Yuuri. "In your world, you get hanahaki when you're in unrequited love with someone. Here, we call it the flower cough, and you get it when someone is in unrequited love with _you_."

Yuuri looked quizzically up at him. "Really? I never--" he broke off and coughed. Another few petals emerged, but thankfully only a few. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyebrows knitting together. "I never even thought about it," he said. "Huh. Weird." He shook his head, wearing an expression of bafflement. "So, wait, I'm not in love with someone? Someone's in love with _me_?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," Gunter said, dabbing his eyes and bowing his head solemnly. "We will, of course, strive to find whoever it may be--we'll search the entire country if we have to, although we shouldn't have to--and of course it's no surprise that someone might fall in love with you, of course not--"

"You'll look for whoever's in love with me?" Yuuri asked. "Well, okay, I guess, but--how can we know for sure? It could be anyone, right?"

"It shouldn't be that hard," Gwendal said gruffly, and somehow, Conrad did not react.

"The flower cough is not blind," Gunter said. "It's thought that it only afflicts those of genuine sentiment. Someone who saw you walking down the street and and thought you were handsome and marvelous and wonderful would not give you the flower cough--although that assessment is quite correct, Your Majesty--"

"Wait," Yuuri said, "_what_?"

"It's someone who knows you," Conrad said. His voice sounded distant in his own ears. "Perhaps not well, perhaps not deeply, but it's someone who knows and loves _you_. Not the Maou, but Shibuya Yuuri. And the number of such people is limited."

_What a fool I was,_ Conrad thought, _to think I could _**_not_**_ fall in love with him._

Yuuri blinked. "Okay," he said dubiously. "Okay, so maybe we can find them. But even if--I mean, uh, there's no guarantee that I'll fall in love back, you know? Though I can do my best to get them to fall out of love with me, that shouldn't be too hard--"

_If only._

"Your Majesty!" Gunter gasped, appalled.

"I'm just saying," Yuuri said, crossing his arms. "Do we need to make a big deal out of this? I--" One more cough produced a single petal, which he dropped with a sigh. It fluttered down to join its companions on the cobblestone. "I mean, yeah, it's kind of annoying," he continued, barely missing a beat, "but it's not that big of a deal, right?"

Not a big deal?

Conrad swayed on his feet, suddenly light-headed. "Yuuri," he said. "_Yuuri_."

"You're an _idiot_," Wolfram snarled. His face had gone bright red with anger. He stalked forward a single step, his hands curled into trembling fists. "Not a bit deal? _Not a big deal_?"

"Well, it's not," Yuuri said defensively. "What's the worst that could happen?"

Wolfram gnashed his teeth, his hands clenched into fists. When he finally forced the words out, they were scathing. "You could _die_," he said. "The flower cough can be fatal. You could _die_."

"Only theoretically," Yuuri said. "I mean, yeah, I bet it isn't fun, and the side effects are less than ideal, but the surgery itself is really safe."

"Surgery?" Gunter asked.

"Surgery?" Wolfram echoed.

Yuuri stared at them, then turned to Conrad wide-eyed.

"Yuuri," Conrad said gently, "we don't have that kind of medical technology here. The only cures for the flower cough are the natural ones."

Yuuri gulped. Finally, the gravity of the situation seemed to be sinking in. "But," he said, "but." He seemed to be scrambling. "But I could go back home!" he argued. "I could get the surgery back on Earth!"

"But you won't have hanahaki back home," Conrad said. "You aren't in love with anyone, so when you go back home, your hanahaki should go away. There's won't be anything to operate on. You'll only have the flower cough when you're here."

"But," Yuuri said, and then he trailed off helplessly, at last lapsing into silence.

Conrad averted his eyes, his heart clenching. He wasn't the only one; Wolfram bit his lip and looked away.

Abruptly, Yuuri let out a strangled noise, and then his legs buckled and his knees hit the cobblestone and he choked and gagged and heaved, clutching his throat.

"Your Majesty!" Gunter yelped.

"Yuuri!" Conrad dropped to his knees beside Yuuri and laid a hand on his back. He could feel the shudders wracking Yuuri's body, violent in their futility. The thudding of his own heart felt equally cruel. "It's all right, Yuuri," he said, and somehow kept his voice neutral and calm. "Let it go. Just breathe and let it go."

Yuuri gagged, and then a flood of white flower petals came pouring from his mouth, wet and crumpled and agonizingly beautiful.

Conrad wanted to close his eyes, wanted to look away, but it was harder to keep watching, harder to witness the results of his own uncontrollable selfishness.

He gazed at Yuuri and did not look away, not for a moment.

Yuuri choked and wretched and hacked until finally, finally, the deluge stopped. At last he let out on last weak cough, and then there was nothing but breathing, shaky, rough, uneven. His shoulders slumped, and he wiped his mouth on the back of one trembling hand.

"Are you all right?" Conrad asked, his voice gentle.

Yuuri swallowed once, again. Finally he said, his voice hoarse, "Okay. Fine. I get it. Whoever it is, we'll find them."

"Of course, Your Majesty!" Gunter exclaimed. "We'll start searching right away!" And he whirled and strode away, his cape rippling.

"You should get some rest," Wolfram said brusquely, somehow managing to make it sound like an insult. Still, his wan face and twitching fingers betrayed him. He grabbed one of Yuuri's arms and hauled him to his feet. "Come on, let's go." He shot a look at Conrad. It wasn't the poisonous glare Conrad had grown used to over the years; instead, it was something demanding, almost desperate.

"We'll figure it out," Conrad said, to him, to Yuuri, to everyone but himself. He wasn't fooling himself; he knew there was nothing to figure out.

"Wolfram, take His Majesty to his rooms," Gwendal ordered. Then he looked at Conrad, his stare flat. "I'm going to go talk to Ulrike," he said gruffly. "We might have to send him back to Earth. You should clean this up; we might not want everyone to know about this."

That was all he said, but it was enough. Conrad burned with shame. He could read Gwendal's message loud and clear. Still, somehow Conrad held his gaze and did not flinch. "Of course," he said, and tasted the self-loathing on the back of his tongue.

Wolfram dragged Yuuri away. Conrad could hear him talking the entire way--"Come on, you wimp, I know you can still walk." They vanished around the corner and out of sight. Gwendal gave Conrad one last look, then turned and stalked away, head high, ponytail trailing behind him. And then Conrad was alone, still kneeling on the ground, countless flower petals strewn in front of him.

He stared at the petals, something thick and black as tar swelling inexorably inside him. Then the dam gave way, and he slammed a fist into the stone and bit back a sound that was half sob, half scream, all bitterness and self-loathing and despair.

The silent cry practically rent his throat, but still he held it back, held it back until his eyes prickled with tears. He gritted his teeth until he could hear his own jaw creak. And then it was gone, punctured, collapsing under its own weight, and he could do nothing but sink in on himself, press his forehead to his own clenched fist, and breathe.

_I promised myself_, he thought, and hated himself a little more.

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, gathered his bearings. He pulled himself upright and stared at the flower petals, the seconds slipping by.

Eventually, he went and got a bucket.

He came back with a wooden bucket normally used to feed the horses. With too-steady hands, he gathered the petals together into a little pile, small and inoffensive, and then he scooped them up and dropped them into the bucket. The petals, slick with saliva, clung to each other and to his skin alike. He brushed his hands off, flicking the stubborn ones into the bucket to join their companions. He had to pluck the last few off the stone floor with his fingertips.

He held one up before his eyes, pinched between his fingers, and gazed at it, his heart too heavy. _I did this_, he thought, and then, again, _I promised myself_.

He was a despicable man.

He moved to drop the last petal into the bucket with the others, then froze. He hesitated, vacillated, and then he gave in and slipped the petal into his pocket instead. It was a reminder. It felt like punishment.

He stared at the bucketful of flower petals. _We should keep these_, he thought dimly, _Ulrike will want to look at them._ She could figure out what kind of flower it was, what it meant. Exactly what kind of love had put these petals into Yuuri's lungs.

Conrad didn't want to know.

He took the bucket of petals to his own room. He closed the door firmly behind him, set the bucket down, and stared at the petals.

_I'm not in love with him_, Conrad told himself. It felt right, it _did_; he knew what it was to be in love, and he didn't feel like he was in love now. But he also knew himself, knew himself well enough to distrust himself, and he knew what he was capable of, and more than anything, the flower petals that filled the bucket at his feet were more than proof enough.

Conrad leaned against the closed door, staring desolately at the ceiling. _Julia, _he thought, _I'm sorry_. And then he broke, slumping down on himself, head bowed, both hands over his mouth, eyes squeezing shut and shoulders shaking as he broke--

_I promised myself,_ he thought. _I promised myself I wouldn't kill him, too._

**Author's Note:**

> (Inspired by the prompts: 100 words of flowerchoke sadworld / 100 words of unusual hanahaki)


End file.
